I'm thinking of digging out the Musicians Institute book ' Music Reading For Guitar' by David Oakes again and taking another stab at learning

I can read it. But not as fast as I used to. My opinion is that it's a good skill to know even if you don't use it that much as it's not so hard to learn and could also allow you to transcribe music from other instruments if you have sheet music but no tabs.

Yeah, I can read music. Some of it I may not be able to perform well..but I can play it on the piano. I never learned site reading on the guitar though. Would be a good idea to learn. I took piano lessons for many years, starting when I was 8 years old. I memorized the space notes for both the bass and treble cleft. I just think of what is between the spaces, instead of memorizing the lines too.

Looooong time ago I have been able to read it, and actually play anything that you gave me written down like that, it was while I was still in music school, learning to play classical guitar. But I guess I never ever read music like that ever since I was 16 or 17, so it has been a couple of weeks already ;-) Today I can still read, but I am very slow and I definitely could not pick up a piece of paper with written music and just start playing, it is just the lack or practice I guess. Do I miss it? Not at all! In Blind Guardian we never wrote down anything, we recorded all our ideas instead, so if I forget something I will have to use my ears, and somehow I prefer this concept, after all we are talking about music, which is made dor our ears, not our eyes ;-) But of course it is not a bad thing if you can read music.

One thing I never got is why even the most accomplished pianists sometimes still have sheet music in front of them while playing? Surely they can remember?

I think it is the way they learn - how it just is and how it has become. The piano has a stand for music integrated in the instrument. Can you imagine how silly it would look for guitarists on stage to have a music stand in front of them? Headbanging, with all the notes blurring everywhere!

I can read it, because I play both piano and guitar. As a guitarist I have only used this skill when taking a piece that was orginally in standard notation and adapting it to the guitar, but other than that I virtually never use it in anything guitar related.

I can read decently. I have to use that capability to study Jazz. When I play jazz tunes for people, though, I just read the chord charts. I am not good enough to site read melodies just yet. Some of them are too fast.

I can read it, but not in real-time (if it's not VERY slow and simple). I can work out a song from it, given more or less time; or get a grasp of a piece without playing it. I can write it if I have to, e.g. when composing.

I know the note names, and I know the note durations, so in theory with a lot of practice I could get somewhere, but I am so used to using my ear that I rely on that as a crutch.

I had about 8 months of piano lessons when I was 10 and a couple years ago bought the sheet music for a Ludovico Einaudi album thinking I could teach myself to play piano properly from my meager abilities, and the sheet music helped but I still had to listen to the music along with the sheet music. I only got about 16 bars into the piece at 75% of the original speed.